Thursday, December 19, 2013

Niku no Mansei Menten/Sakaba at Sunshine City

When we first saw the menu and signs outside of this place (Alpa B1-22, 6914-0729), it looked like some kind of tonkatsu specialist, even though there was a bit more variety when one looked deeper into the menu. And when I asked the lady for a recommendation, she initially started with ramen. It didn't really sound that appealing at the time, so I asked for something else instead. She pushed us toward that little karubi plate above. It turned out that this was actually a bit of an izakaya of sorts; I also noticed some cheese kushiage on the menu too, and ordered it along with a few other items like gyutan and chahan.

It was only after I looked it up now did I realize that this was an Ikebukuro outlet of a beef specialist in Kanda near Akihabara, where they have a whopping ten story building where each floor specializes in a different way to prepare beef, including yakiniku, teppanyaki, shabu shabu, or in this case, ramen. Either way, it was all delicious...except for maybe a katsu sando that was totally oversauced. I'm not sure if that's the way that they normally do it here, but it was totally salty and required lots of beer to help it down. I suppose that that is the point of going to an izakaya after all though.